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Topic: Dungeon Defenders 2 - Current state of the game (Read 6398 times)

Getting mana not from enemies or by regeneraion seems to be the new standard in Dungeon Defenders 2 I have the feeling. The Lavamancer did the same with his fissures and the Abyss Lord has to suck it from enemies directly 8he still can collect the blue crystals though).

I don't have the Gun Witch, EV2 or the Mystic but I think the Gun witch has also another mana mechanic? She has anyway only magic abilities so it would make sense if she would have an alternate source for mana.I don't know anything about the mystic, haven't seen any videos about her, I don't even know what her defenses do.EV2 uses normal mana I think but I could be wrong on that.

Gunwitch just generates mana like crazy. One of her abilities actually takes so long to finish executing it's high mana cost is irrelevant. It's actually hard to run out of mana with her, and even then it's like "oh no, let me just--" *ability*

EV2 uses "heat." As she uses abilities, it goes up, firing her gun and it goes down. Her right-click attack makes it go up, though, which I think is dumb.

Okay, this is a big one. So essetnially Trendy remade DD2 entirely. I may sound exaggerating but they really have reshaped the game.So first let me post the big patch page: http://trials.dungeondefenders2.com/

The new update is called "Trials" but I often call it Ascencion update.

Of you have played DD2 before, you can bet one thing: All your progress, all your effort, all the time you spent has been taken away fgrom you. You get basically nothing.Just to make it clear before my rant starts, I like the new approach of the update and the system itself. it gives players more flexibility on their chars and allows them to shape them better to their liking. I'm simply not happy that they made such a big step suddenly. They coudl have broken the entire thing down in smaller steps, that people can better prepare. The update also needs a lot of balancing.

Okay, finally let's come to the changes. Are you one of the people, that had the rare weapons with cool passive effects? Had a Toxic Shock bow? Bling-o Midas? Harbinger Sword? You still have those items and they still look cool on your chars. But they have ripped off the passives of every single item. Items have no passives anymore, that means those special weapons don't have them either. Which... does not make them special anymore, I guess. Euipment does not come anymore with Defense stats (stats for your towers), instead they come with battle stats like bonus health, more damage, armor etc. Relics drop only with defense stats, stuff that increased the hp and damage of your towers. Even stuff like attack speed (which wasn't there before). Relics can now be assigned to towers individually, so you can gve a hp boost to barriers and an attack boost to dps towers. This allows you to fit your towers with what they need instead of making a compromise and fitting only hp boots ont he squire because you want only to use the barriers. This is probably the best idea in this update, it allows you to make the best use of every single hero you have instead of arranging them to fill into a certain role. The sad part is of course, your items are (at the start) garbage because they don't fit intot he new system at all. Since stats have been redesigned, you might end up with stats that aren't good. You also have of course nto enough relics for every single hero, you prpibably have only one relic per hero, but now you need four times the amount. Without relics, every single tower is now shit.Why? Because passive stats (from leveling up) that you could invest into certain points like more damage or defense health, are gone. leveling up has only the purpose to equip stronger items, that's all. That means you need relics to give your towers any stats at all, otherwise you cannot use them (except in easy mode).

Skill spheres, which also gave passive effects to your heroes, are gone too. Both Skill Spheres and item passives are now unified into a new system, called Shards. Every player that completed the campaign before the update got a collection of "good will" shards. pretty much you get a collection of the most basic and terrible stuff that you could get from easy missions. These give some basic passive effects, like boosting the stats of your towers by a certain percentage or giving your char more movement speed. Shards can be fit into equipment, equipment now has slots, the rarer the item, the more slots it has. Shards help you to shape out your characters better and to give them the much needed boost. They also give the special abilites that were on your items befroe. But don't think you get the same shard that your Toxic Shock bow had before just because you have that bow. Thats why older players are literally screwed now, because they lost everythign that they made strong and got only the most basic stuff in return that does not help them. new players will of course adapt to the new system because... well, they are new, they don't know it any other way. Also during their progress during the camapign they get all the items and shards they need while older players get nothing useful anymore.Generally however, shards are the way to go. They give your heroes the much needed flexibility. I really hate it that you got sometimes items with better stats, that were useless to you because they didn't had the passive effect you needed. The new system allows you to switch out your items easily when you got something with better stats while still keeping your passives. An amazing approach despite the horrible execution during launch.

Nightmare difficulty is gone, it was replaced by the even harder Chaos mode. Chaos is the new "hard mode" and the new way to play the endgame. Chaos introduces 5 new enemies on each of its difficulty levels, the first one is the Goblin Shield Bearer that blocks all incoming damage from the front. I haven't seen the others so far, because I cannot beat even Chaos 1. Chaos is really a lot harder then before, especially because enemies now scale with your stats and the number of players. i don't know how much they scale but a lot of player they, that this needs to be balanced right now because it's over the top. The gap between campaign and Chaos is huge, Campaign is a piece of cake while Chaos is... well, chaos. It's even harder because all your tactics, that relied on your passives, are not possible anymore. I heard that the Angry Nimbus from the Drayd is the new meta. Probably because its damage scales so well with defense power and it does not rely on passives so much.As I'm still strugglign to adapt, I cannot talk much in detail about the entire changes of the difficulty or the enemies.

Ascension is another endgame conetn newly introduced. when your characters reach level 50, they accumulate ascension xp. The ascension xp are gained for their class (mutliple heroes of the same class do not produce more xp) and once you reach a new level, you can invest the xp into ascension points. these are small passive effects that work for every hero of the same class. For example you can increase stun durations of skills or increase the range of towers. Ascension allows you to progress your hero even further when you reached the limit through items and shards. The upper limit of ascension levels is really high and I think it will a very long time for the first one to reach the end. I mean, some of the upgrades have 999 levels. Thats insanely high, lol. Acension replace the old stat system you had before.

Items and shards can be now easier be upgraded. Before the update you had to sacrifice tons of other items among a good amount of gold. Now you need only gold and you can do this quickly from your backpack, even if you are on a map at the moment. You don't have to talk to a specific NPC anymore, this saves time and nerves.

Trials are a new way to play the game. They are tied with the new Chaos difficulty and you are assigned to play certain maps, if you complete them, you get the rarer shards and items you need for your character.

Additionally to all of the above, they balanced everything again, heroes, enemies, towers. A lot of heroes have their towers or abilites changed in one way or another. Every tower draws less aggro from enemies, so you are guarented that they rather attack your barriers.Some towers have been exchanged with their skill sphere counterpart, for example the flameburst tower of the Apprentice is now the flamethrower tower.

Players have now bigger bags to carry more loot. whcih is funny since you need less space because passives on items are gone. But I think you eed the extra space for your shards, so you can collect, sort and exchange them as you need. Honestly, since I'm still in the early phase and get only trash shards, I don't see how much space I currently need.

Anyway, I think oerall the update is a great idea with a bad execution. Old players raged a little when it came out (honestly, this is justified) but people are already making new strategy guides and lay out new tactis for the game. It's great how the meta has changed. I also hope it's now more flexible instead of seeing the same tower build execution on every single map. I'm tired of PDT explosions.

Okay, finally let's come to the changes. Are you one of the people, that had the rare weapons with cool passive effects? Had a Toxic Shock bow? Bling-o Midas? Harbinger Sword? You still have those items and they still look cool on your chars. But they have ripped off the passives of every single item.

Many of those passives were actually multiple passives (Bling-o-Midas was two) and didn't quite "fit" in the new system easily, so they were basically just disabled for now. They'll make a return. Unique weapons and their passives will be just like any other passive: a shard, except that it won't be removable. It's permanently attached to the item.

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The gap between campaign and Chaos is huge, Campaign is a piece of cake while Chaos is... well, chaos. It's even harder because all your tactics, that relied on your passives, are not possible anymore. I heard that the Angry Nimbus from the Drayd is the new meta. Probably because its damage scales so well with defense power and it does not rely on passives so much.As I'm still strugglign to adapt, I cannot talk much in detail about the entire changes of the difficulty or the enemies.

I don't know about the meta, but yes, Campaign -> C1 is a wall. So is C3 -> C4 I hear.But I don't know about it first-hand because I haven't been able to play without cheats for a year (I'm on RQA: my testing account has cheat access).

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Trials are a new way to play the game. They are tied with the new Chaos difficulty and you are assigned to play certain maps, if you complete them, you get the rarer shards and items you need for your character.

Just so this is out there:Trials is Chaos and forces you to play on a random map from a list of 5. Playing a specific map is called "practice mode" by Trendy and offers 10% of the exp, gold, and defender medals and garbage loot (the ipwr is fixed at 255, although ipwr is no longer "a thing").

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Anyway, I think oerall the update is a great idea with a bad execution. Old players raged a little when it came out (honestly, this is justified) but people are already making new strategy guides and lay out new tactis for the game. It's great how the meta has changed. I also hope it's now more flexible instead of seeing the same tower build execution on every single map. I'm tired of PDT explosions.

There's definitely things I like about the update, there's also things I don't like.The new enemies just completely wreck a whole swath of towers and heroes with no regards to making strategy interesting.

"Shield goblins can't be hit by projectiles from in front? Well hug you piercing, even if you hit from behind the shield intercepts the shot." I bug reported this and was told "it's not getting fixed because THAT'S HARD also totally unrealistic: if the shield can intercept from the front then it should also intercept from behind." AKA: hug you gameplay. The shield also intercepts shots when the goblin is knocked into the air or turned into a lovably book*.*Book Drop + Shield is getting fixed in the next hotfix, I believe.

The shield bubble enemies (I have no idea what their official name is) can get turned to stone by Maw of the Earth Drake, buuuut their shield doesn't go down when they are frozen, despite the "weakness to stun." Also note that there's all of two ways to deal stun that don't involve projectiles. Neither of which would be overly bothered by the shield anyway (melee attacks with a stun shard or seismic slam).

EMP orc's emp blast is huge and lasts forever. It's getting an overhaul to be more of a linear projectile thing (think collosus direct command thing, and the duration will be reduced). Which the reflect wall can reflect. And when it does so, the projectile still disables traps as if its team was still an "enemy" shot. Unlike every other reflected projectile.

As you can see, they nerfed most towers that were currently considered "strong" but they didn't do anythign to fix the appearent problems witht he enemies. on the question, why they left them as they are, the answer was "Wer will be doing this in a few weeks". I cannot say how bad this decision actually is. You cannot balance one thing but leave another aspect completely out just because you don't know at the moment how to do it. Practically they left the towers now in a terrible state and you still have to deal with the overpowered enemies. It's pretty much a hopeless fight. I think I will skip this game until they balance this out. I was happy when I saw there was an update today, because I thozght they would balance the enemies, niope, they thought nerfing towers was more important. while I can see that some nerfs were needed, they HAVE to balance the enemies. Are they blind or dumb or what? It's fricking hard to do anything right now and now it got even harder. How are people supposed to get any progress? At this point people believe Trendy made this, so people have to put insane amounts of times into the game until they get something decent. This might be actually very true. Trendy made some comments that Chaos 5 should only be for the most elite players in the game and that you need a lot of time to prepare for that. Problem is, that this does not apply to Chaos 5 only. It applies to the Trials in general.

Also, Draco, on regard of the Cybork, they "fixed" that the EMP lasts forever. Actually they made it worse. They halved the duration but now he activates the EMP blast on every attack, so this doesn't actually matter. it could be 5 seconds and he still would spam this forever. Unless you stunlock Cyborks, there is no way to interrupt them long enough. Maybe this will be the enw Meta.

Also, I agree, knocked up or stunend enemies SHOULD be subject to all damage instances like normal, after all they are disabled, why should they be able to use their special abilities, even if they work passively?

About item passives: Even if they return in some way, what I actually meant was, that you NOW don't have them anymore. And you still can get them as shard (I thought I said this, maybe I forgot that) but the problem is, you don't have them at this point. They took them from you and you have to grind them again. Problem is, this is too hard, because most people relied on those passives for their strategy and cannot adapt to anything new. After people figuered this finally out, the new "proper" way of playing gets nerfed again. At this point Trendy tries everything to fight any useful strategy to make the game easier. They should stop turning this more and more into a hardcore game. As a f2p title this does not help with receptions at all.

Anyway, I'm a bit salty now. The update before was simply "okay, it's new, okay I lost everything, game was in Early Access anyway, time to grind again". After this one I'm pretty much done until they finally put their shit together and balance stuff out. This has gotten ridiculous and I don't want to play an elitist game,w here only the hardcore players can do anything at all.

A few things, mostly based on the salt I've already seen - Poison Dart Tower crit rate being reduced. Well, seeing as its crit rate was 30% per dart when literally everything else is at 3% base, that's a bug. It was fixed. - Angry Nimubs: loss of AOE is definitely a nerf, but as I was never told that it was (or was not supposed to have AOE) I can't comment - EMP orcs firing their thing every attack: I'll certainly say something about this next time I can. - World Tree cost change: as the world tree was being used as the most durable barricade in the game this is quite appropriate. - Arcane barrier: Not sure why it had a 200 health scaling to start with. RQA had already mentioned that it's health scaling was on-par with barricade, but cost less DU and that got updated (to be identical). - Bookdrop lifespan being reduced: this is new to me and I'm going to mention it. - Radiant Power: I mentioned and reported that shit back when shards first showed up. It was stupidly amazingly overpoweredly broken as hug.

Spoiler for Hidden:

Basically day 1 Dani and I geared ourselves up to see if we could transition from Campaign to Chaos 1. He told me to randomly generate about 24 shards to play with. He then went and dumped every single one in existence into his inventory to play around with. He ended up giving himself a radiant power shard (which the base % was something like 10% and it scaled up to 150%). He was crushing Chaos 1 left and right and I was unable to finish even a single wave. He was so confused so we compared gear: He'd forgotten he had radiant power. When we compared I pointed it out to him and the fact that he was getting 100% of his hero damage as raw defense power. His hero damage (on just his weapon) was 2000ish. His DP from gear was 300. I said "No lovably wonder you were crushing things and I had to generate ipwr 30,000 before I came close."[/quote]

Uhm, the wworld tree is by far the worst barricade, not the most durable. that would be the Maw of the Earth Drake and that costs twice the normal Du than any other, so it's justified. The world Tree has the worst stats, a fairly low hitbox which means enemies will more easily walk besides it and doesn't do anything on the offense. You can argue now "but it's abarrier, why shoudl it do any offensive?" but all other barriers DO that kind of thing while the world tree simply acts as anchor for Dryad defenses (which is already a stupid system to begin with) and healing aura (with a terrible tiny range after the recent changes to its behaviour). I agree that the costs should be on par with the rest barriers, but so should be the health. The salt is not because of the costs but because it's in every other way ifnerior to other barriers and the costs were the only reason why you would buy it.What health do you have on it anyway if you say it is the most durable barricade?

I cannot comment on Radiant power but people left and right acknowledged it was broken.

Also I'm not talking about stuff that was broken or needed to be nerfed. but you notivced yoruself, that you cannot beat C1 with the stuff you get fromt he campaign. That#s the problem. People don't use the op stuff because it's op but because it is at this point the only way to even play this game. If they nerf the only towers that CAN beat Chaos/Trials, why not balance the enemies, that are currently broken, at the same patch?

Also I'm not talking about stuff that was broken or needed to be nerfed. but you notivced yoruself, that you cannot beat C1 with the stuff you get fromt he campaign.

That was before a significant balance pass. That was before the alteration to stats due to how each tower got its totals. It was using the old numbers (5 pieces of gear -> all towers) but only applying the result from *one* item to each tower.

In any case, I do agree that there's a problem. But I also know that I'm ill-equipped to make judgement calls on balance (I never got into the original nightmare difficulty and even during testing I couldn't beat NM2+ without cheats, even using 750 gear). The problem is, we were never asked to fill out any feedback forms on what our thoughts were. It was all "verify that X happens/doesn't happen."

That's a very bad testing process. Not on your end, but on trendys end that they say they don't want to hear feedback. They pretty much NEED that but don't care. But at least that explains why every patch is badly optimized when it comes out first.

Anyway, I may overreact at this point and I'm sure they WILL balance it eventually. They always do. They did it with the heroes, with the defense medals system, wit the Terraria update. They will do it here as well. Problem is, that stuff should be tested before (and as I know now, it is tested before but they don't care for feedback) and should be balanced out at the first day. Instead we have to wait now several weeks until they know how to fix this.

Okay, bugs aside, I think the following thing are currently issues that should be solved:-Gold farming. It's terrible at this point and it's now needed much more then before. Before trials, gold was never a problem, you didn't need much and you got more then you get today. 3000 gold per campaign quest, thtats enough to level one shard for one level. And only at the early levels. 80 gold if you sell a legendary equipmenz. Is this some kind of sick joke? I don't even collect equipment anynore because it's a waste of time.

-Difficulty gaps. Difficulty sikes on higher levels are okay, but the gaps here are a different story. The gap between campaign and trials is too big. Basicallly a good design choice would be that you can immediatly jump into Chaos 1 once you finished the campaign. It's currently not possible. The first gap should be between Chaos 1 and 2 because Chaos is the intended Endgame content while campaign is an extended tutorial that levels your characters to level 50 and introduces you to the enemies and mechanics of the game. If players finish the campaign, they want to do immediatly the trials. They can't at this point, hell, I have better stuff than the crap from the campaign an cannot do it.

-Shard system is awefully balanced at this point. Campaign gives only crap, Chaos 1 gives crap, the good stuff starts at Chaos 3+. There are few exceptions, fortification and destruction are good in general. But the drop system is terrible, you get 2 shards per victory, 3 at best and it always seems very random what you get. Leveling your shards is necessary but tied to the gold problem.

-Enemy scaling. All enemies scale too high if playing with others. And you won't get much of a benefit here. I want to compare this to Sanctum 2. Enemies in Sanctum scale with the number of players, two players mean twice the HP of the enemies. Everything else stays the same, the number of monsters, their damage to players etc. However, more players can get twice the resources as well, since resources are given individually. In DD2 they are solit, there is always a fixed amount of green mana and more players mean, that it gets split evenly among them. That you get multiple attackers on the map does not even this out.

-Some ineffective ascension upgrades. Range Gambit is aweful as I've geard. You trade power vs range and everyone considers this a bad trade.

-Super strong new enemy types. They block damage from different sources or disable defenses. Difficult to deal with, especially since they always come in big combinations. Since you cannot specify what your towers should target first, it' hard to deal with them.

These are all however balancing issues and can be easily sorted out. I have to wait at this point for the next patch, otherwise it's impossible for me to beat Chaos 1. The gap is too big.

Well, you are only a tester, not a developer. You can only try to give feedback to Trendy but if they listen is ultimately their choice. And so far it seems they don't listen much.At this point I'm actually surprised that there are even testing groups. I thought they would just unleash the patches untested because every single time it is bug riddled, old bugs that were long gone, return again, balancing is far off the charts and Trendy receives heavy backlash fromt he community.You would except they learn fromt his but nope, they do it again and again.They will eventually fix the mess, they always do, but they will take their sweet time with that and after the fix it will only last until they ruin it again. It's a vicious cycle.

Anyway, I'm just going to farm gold in campaign until it's balanced, there is not much I can do anyway. It's gonna be boring but at least I can level some equipment and shards that way.

I think it's time for another recap of the things that have changed. More so because the game is reaching it's full release 8no date yet but the devs stated they are close to the release).

Game had another big update called "Springt Forward". They've added two new chaos tiers (difficulty settings) with two new enemy types. The first one is theHexthrower, a buffed version of the Javelin Thrower. Like his normal counterpart his ranged attacks pierce anything in a straight line but additionally he also debuffs now anything he hits.

The other enemy is the Kobolt, a more annoying version fo the flying kobold. Kobolds dive bomb on defenses and do huge damage, Kobolts on the other hand disable them entirely (EMP effect) for a short duration. Anti-air protection is now signicfically more important than before.

The update also added the option to use tower skins (if purchased wih real money), so more cosmetic options. The plague set on the huntress towers looks sick (pun intended).

They've finally added pc controller support, nearly every pc controller works now, something people complained a lot, s I guess they are happy now? I remember how terrible DD1 was to play with a controller, so I don't play DD2 with one, so I cannot tell if this works 100%.

Bags can now be auto-sorted but with no options HOW you want to sort them. Yay! Hopefully they will add this later.

A new shop that can be accessed from your inventory screen has also been added. basically this shop includes items from all the other shops, so you don't have to run to the NPCs anymore. Unless you want to hatch eggs because that's not in there.

They finally removed the victory chest cutscene (basically the game zoomed to your chest while it spawned and then teleported you directly to it), so you can continue collecting the spoils on the map while the chest spawns.

Additionally the usual balancing changes and bug fixes that I don't want to mention here.

One thing to mention hower is the new "streak" system. If you beat mutliple trial maps in a row, you get now an additional shard for your items.They've also changed how shards drop, before higher chaos tiers could drop anything from their tier and below, now they drop only the shard from their tier and one shard from anything below. This is better because it narrows down what you get if you look for something specific. With the two new chaos tiers they've added also some new shards but also reintroduced old shards/abilities that they removed before.

I think the new shard system is curently the best experience you can get, it still has the random factor that gives you the chance to play the game multiple times without having everything at your hand immediatly but also is narrow enough to reduce big frustration moments because you never get what you want.

Game had another big update called "Springt Forward". They've added two new chaos tiers (difficulty settings) with two new enemy types. The first one is theHexthrower, a buffed version of the Javelin Thrower. Like his normal counterpart his ranged attacks pierce anything in a straight line but additionally he also debuffs now anything he hits.

I'm sure it will shock no one to hear that there are plans for 3 more (nice round number of 10 total).

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The other enemy is the Kobolt, a more annoying version fo the flying kobold. Kobolds dive bomb on defenses and do huge damage, Kobolts on the other hand disable them entirely (EMP effect) for a short duration. Anti-air protection is now signicfically more important than before.

Kobolts used to also deal massive damage. It was very much complained about and I remember one of the patches being "reduced damage: now towers that focus on DH should just barely survive." And I'm like, "What? No, the whole point is to EMP-blast them. They can't be stunned if they're dead."

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The update also added the option to use tower skins (if purchased wih real money), so more cosmetic options. The plague set on the huntress towers looks sick (pun intended).

Long time coming, they went all-out with it. I've got a few favorites (the Amurica skin for the Squire is super flashy and while I'd never use it, it makes a great poster).

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They've finally added pc controller support, nearly every pc controller works now, something people complained a lot, s I guess they are happy now? I remember how terrible DD1 was to play with a controller, so I don't play DD2 with one, so I cannot tell if this works 100%.

Tne thing to mention hower is the new "streak" system. If you beat mutliple trial maps in a row, you get now an additional shard for your items.They've also changed how shards drop, before higher chaos tiers could drop anything from their tier and below, now they drop only the shard from their tier and one shard from anything below. This is better because it narrows down what you get if you look for something specific. With the two new chaos tiers they've added also some new shards but also reintroduced old shards/abilities that they removed before.

I think the new shard system is curently the best experience you can get, it still has the random factor that gives you the chance to play the game multiple times without having everything at your hand immediatly but also is narrow enough to reduce big frustration moments because you never get what you want.

Any form of "not continuing" will break the streak. If you find something else that does it (besides losing) be sure to report it as a bug. Ditto if you pick continue and don't end up continuing.

Anyway, side from "how it works" I've got no experience actually using it. I think it's a decent enough system, I just wish shards were easier to get a hold of outside of Chaos (cough, new player during campaign, cough).